N17 Sentries Rule/Raising Alarm Interpretation...?

Ok, this one got us puzzled, as it seems counter intuitive and awfully balanced. [not as this would be the only rule in the new set to be rather off]

GW1 Page 53, "Raising the Alarm"

Situation:
The attacker proceeds with his first activation this turn. He shoots, and takes out of action a Sentry but raises the alarm.

Now, the wording of the rule:
"Once the alarm is raised, the Sentry rules no longer apply. Any Sentries who have a Ready marker keep it and can be activated this round."

In the situation stated above, none of the Sentries have a ready marker. Thus, the attacker can now activate one by one every of his fighters, however the defender has neighter fighters ready nor can he try to get to shoot by moving Sentries around. Effectivly the attacker get's one full free turn, without the defender beeing able to do anything.

This is awfull in regards of having in interessting game as the rules for the devender using Sentries is already kind of unbalanced. If this interpretation is correct, an attacker can make a "no fun" alpha strike and force the sensible defender to bootle as soon as the alarm is raised.

Are we correct RAW or are we not seeing something here? Your thoughts?

Bonus points for:
How does tunnels/vents special turf when beeing the defender and using Sentries?

Had the same problem. We eventually decided that each sentry who hadn't moved that turn got a ready marker. It requires remembering or noting down which sentry has moved though.

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It's not bad. However this could also mean, as attacker you raise the alarm on your last activation and only 1 or 2 Sentries have been moved so far. (In our game it was like that, only 2-3 models were randomly used.) which sounds wrong as well, however, there would be some tactics requiered by the attacker, which would be good.

I would like to have every Sentriy have to do an Initiative Check to get one action when the alarm is raised. This would still be in the style of being surprise but also give the defender some chance to brace and react.

We house ruled it like this:
On the first turn whenever the defender wants to activate a model both players roll off.
Highest roll gets to activate the defending model.
Defending models won't take any action that will directly harm themselves or members of their gang.
My opponent usually moved my guys into corners or around a wall either into a lane of shooting or just out of the way for what he wanted to do.

It worked pretty well (he got to activate almost all of my guys) and required a lot less page flipping.
YMMV.

We've gone for just ending the turn when the alarm goes off. It's the only semi-sensible way we could find to handle things. Had the alarm been raised by a defender spotting the enemy we'd let them have their activation first, but it always goes off from LOUD NOISES anyway.

We've gone for just ending the turn when the alarm goes off. It's the only semi-sensible way we could find to handle things. Had the alarm been raised by a defender spotting the enemy we'd let them have their activation first, but it always goes off from LOUD NOISES anyway.

Protected by the darkness, the attackers have worked undetected on the inattentive defenders. The guards may be tired, chatting, smoking cigarettes, dreaming about their girlfriend, etc. Then suddenly a shot is heard and the alarm raised.
The opponents are ready to attack and before the completely surprised guards and defenders ever really understand what is going on, the attackers have already overwhelmed and shot them or cut their throats and so on ....

Yak Supporter

Having been on the receiving end of this, I actually don’t think it’s as big a problem as we initially thought. The attacker is trying to set up a surprise assault, I’m ok with that. There is an increasing chance that the alarm goes off at the end of the round anyway (6+ round 1, 5+ round 2, etc.).

If you’re lucky enough to have vents as an attacker, I see no reason why you shouldn’t be able to use them. The rounds are well defined. As a defender it doesn’t make sense.

These scenarios will mostly come into play when a lower Gang Rating is attempting to punch up, too, so the free shot doesn’t seem so bad. Defenders strategy should be to not pile in too many valuable fighters as sentries, and pour them in after the alarm goes off. Hell, a high powered gang could just use hive scum as sentries.

I was now on the defender site, just this friday. Is it unfair? Totaly. Can you limit the damage done to you? Yes it's possible. It's perfect for underdogs to challange the big guy. Thus, to leave some fun to it, it should just not been played by a big guy as attacker, then it just feels wrong.

Yak Supporter

I was now on the defender site, just this friday. Is it unfair? Totaly. Can you limit the damage done to you? Yes it's possible. It's perfect for underdogs to challange the big guy. Thus, to leave some fun to it, it should just not been played by a big guy

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Agreed. I suppose the scenario table makes it fairly unlikely, and the attacker has relatively little to gain (although the Rep gain is disproportionate).

I'm loathe to change the rules on it, but my preferred house rules would be to try and limit the gains for an attacker compared to other, less brutal missions for the defender, like Looters.

1. Change the attackers crew to e.g. Custom (6) or Custom (7) (It's a small squad creeping into enemy territory)
2. Introduce an XP or Reputation bonus if the gang can complete the mission without being detected.
3. Maybe reduce the Reputation gain, especially if the attacker has a higher gang rating

The attacker stills gets their big bonus, but there is an incentive fo them not to focus on outright slaughtering the enemy gang, and they will themselves be vulnerable to bottling once the alarm is set off. It should also try and make other scenarios more attractive, by making Sabotage a mission where its harder to bring numerical advantage to bear.

I think what felt wrong about the time we played it @Nucit was that the attacker just had so many troops compared to the defender, even taking reinforcements into account.